


Sailor Void

by Slant



Series: The legion of face-punching [5]
Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga), Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Musicals), Die Verwandlung | The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
Genre: Existentialism, Friendship, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Monster of the Week, Nihilism, Sailor says, diversity and inclusion, kantian ethics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-09-28 11:54:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 5,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10099478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slant/pseuds/Slant
Summary: The Vacuous Gesture brings despair to the Sailor Senshi, but like, in a positive way.Chapter 8 is a good bit, with Doorknobdar in it. You can probably skip to that, really





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So my motivations are a bit dumb here: there's quite a lot of Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon that really demonises despair, so I'm writing in an (pre-existing) OC with a slightly more mature nihilism than Black Lady.  
> Yeah, more mature than a six-year-old with scrambled memories. I'm really aiming high here.

"Dōmo arigatō misutā Robotto," said Cranial Trauma through the videophone.  
The Vacuous Gesture blinked. "Don't. I'm trying to respect cultural differences here. It is difficult."  
The Vacuous Gesture was on secondment to the Sailor Senshi. The cats had given jem a princess wand and some special words to say; the resulting non-transformation complimented jeir normal powerset of angst-rays not at all.  
"It's not language, is it?" said Cranial Trauma hopefully. While there could be cultural and language barriers to communicating with The Vacuous Gesture, solving them would only expose the intractable philosophical problem that was The Vacuous Gesture's world-view*. Some people knew who they were or what they wanted — they'd to things in line with their self-image or to achieve their ends. You could say that The Vacuous Gesture was someone who performed meaningless actions. You could say that jee wanted pointless things, but unless you were The Vacuous Gesture jemself — or being pushed though the Total Perspective Vortex — you would never really understand quite how broad a range of actions were completely devoid of meaning.

* Cranial Trauma had dabbled with some meditation to help focus his Chi through other people's faces - pay attention to your breathing, listen to your heartbeat, that sort of thing. It was relaxing. The Vacuous Gesture had been delighted to find someone else was putting time aside to really _focus_ on the sounds of their incipient mortality.

"They keep talking about love and justice and hope. Admittedly in slightly confusing mix of Japanese and English."  
"Oh that's..." Cranial Trauma didn't know what to say. He knew this: The Vacuous Gesture had no hope: jee couldn't distinguish it from fear and rejected both. The Vacuous Gesture didn't disbelieve in justice; jee didn't have a meaningful definition of justice. Back in the Legion of face-punching, that didn't much matter — Hypermind maximised Utility, Diversity solved for Inclusion and Cranial Trauma resolved everything with face-punching. It was his categorical imperative.  
The Vacuous Gesture did have a working definition for love; it was austere and based in economics and game-theory. Jee had a praxis for it too; it was, as Cranial Trauma could attest, comprehensively bewildering. 

"I'm pretty sure that I'm expected to mentor them, but it was Hypermind's idea, so there must be at least six objectives." Hypermind had not given The Vacuous Gesture orders. She never did.  
Hypermind said things like "If you go do such-and-such, it will have highly positive outcomes."  
She was right 99.5% of the time, and had a very good excuse on the other 1-in-two-hunderad, so people did it. It was as an unsubtle a form of power as Hypermind ever displayed— letting you know you were being manipulated was an expression of trust.

Feeding the ravens at Hikawa Shrine had been an obvious ~~blind~~ * false lead, and the Youma had been equally obvious as the actual reason. The energy drain had filled jem with the sensation of living a brief, fatuous life. Jee had been completely unmoved by this non-change, but Sailor Moon's over-dramatic entrance speech (ignored by Youma and victim alike), and near-complete ineffectiveness in combat had stirred something very like affection in jeir heart.

* After a few months of working with Diversity you'd notice your internal dialogue shifting towards inclusive language. 

"They're kids, so its not like lecturing them will work, so I think I'm meant to be an example."  
"They have given me a princess wand." As normal, The Vacuous Gesture's voice was completely inflexionless, so Cranial Trauma asked how it made jem feel.  
Jee felt the anguish of living a brief life in an Absurd world, so jee told him so. In a lot of ways, this didn't advance the conversation at all, and contained literally no information; Cranial Trauma knew that was what The Vacuous Gesture felt, and jee knew that he knew that and so ad infinitum. Hidden in this exchange was encoded that he cared for the futility of jeir striving, and that he was enthusiastic to illicit meaningless actions from jem. It was very sweet.  
Jee held the Empty Rod- a plain grey stick with a small blank plaque on the end- up to the camera on jeir phone.  
"It is a relic of the ancient Luna civilisation, I suspect it channels the power of your heart... will if you say the right words." The Vacuous Gesture tripped over the imprecisions of allegorical language.  
"I know that you don't mean to be vitalist." Cranial Trauma was an amorphous mineraloid, and while he could technically shape-shift himself a heart if it was important, he generally didn't bother with needless twiddly bits. 

"I think that they think that their love of justice comes from their special words or their princess wands. I am wildly unqualified to comment on this subject, but certainly futility comes from within."  
"Some people think that their lives are empty because they have bad relationships or perform unfulfilling labour. They are wrong."  
"Some people despair at their finitude and weakness in the face of society, or god, or the half decillion cubic light years and fifteen billion years of nothing that is the observable universe. They are wrong too: no scale could make their efforts worth caring about. "  
"Futility is something that you make for yourself, by finding empty acts* that you have no motivation to perform and doing them anyway."

*Cranial Trauma understood The Vacuous Gesture well enough that he knew that, for jem, "empty acts" was a set exactly congruent with "acts". 

"So," asked Cranial Trauma "Do you transform? isn't it an insipid performance, unfit for any serious sapient? What are your special words?"  
"1, Yes, but not like you think, 2 Yes, that is the point-that-is-the-lack-of-point, 3 Ungeziefer Verwandlung*, 1 again, it's still not what you think."  
"I stand there, and then I say the words, and the light flickers and dims and sounds fade, and you get the sensation of success in everything you have ever striven for and none of it was worth anything and then the lights come back, and I'm still standing there and you are still you and you will always still be you."

 

* Apologies to speakers of Middle High German, the shortcomings are mine (and google translate's). If I was good enough, they would be because I was aiming for to write a Middle High German version of "Engrish".


	2. Disgusting cake orgy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inserted this as chapter 2 to keep it in the same order as canon.

"Everything oozes," quoted The Vacuous Gesture, "never the same pus from one second to the next." Jee was trying to make a friend, but was terribly bad at it.

Usagi had not been the most cake-devouring woman in the store, which was both impressive and alarming. The tall elegant woman in red and black had to be coping with something overwhelming, so The Vacuous Gesture had followed her when she sauntered out with unconvincing nonchalance, and now here she was curled up and sobbing. The Vacuous Gesture thought jee had a narrow opportunity to make a personal connection before the woman reassembled her shell, so je continued.

"Sometimes we can forget for a moment but then it all comes back: everything rots." Jee had seen Usagi do this a dozen times — find someone having a crisis, talk to them about something incredibly personal and, by being a safe and caring confidant, help them. Also thwart some sort of monster-related scheme with the very personal information. Unfortunately, jeir idea of friendship started with Vladimir and Estragon.

The Vacuous Gesture was a safe confidant, as long as you remembered to tell them— jee was unlikely to assign enough meaning to anything to repeat it, but by the same notion, jee was not well placed to display genuine empathy. Case in point: this person's shame of being seen as a cake-smeared mess; The Vacuous Gesture didn't assign meaning to flavour, neatness or other people's opinions. Jee was disgusted by physical existence though so maybe ...

Esmeraude pulled herself together. The Vacuous Gesture had been right, the window of opportunity to talk had been narrow, and her shock at being discovered and revulsion at the word "pus" had given jem a few extra seconds. She cursed The Vacuous Gesture into unconsciousness and laughed, long, shrill and affected. She considered bringing her stilettoed heal down on jeir throat for having seen her in a moment of weakness, but jee had seemed to understand how revolting everything is, so maybe ...

She summoned the henge and the droid.


	3. The nature of the Absurd

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Re-ordered this to chapter 3 to keep it in the same order as the series

"One of my new colleague's time-displaced children had her memories edited so that she knew only sorrow and poor parenting. She was always given to acting out, and this exacerbated the issue to the point where she attempted to destroy all life." The Vacuous Gesture reported this behaviour with the same bewildered indifference that jee had expressed when jee told Cranial Trauma about the sakura-watching festival.  
"What she actually said was `love is a lie'. My new colleagues attempted to remind her of love in general and their love for her in particular."  
"I was confused both by her chain of reasoning and their response. Living an empty life is not a motivation to kill— afterwards you will still be surrounded by insipid mundanities, there will just be a corpse in it — and I don't understand why there is an issue with her not knowing love. It seemed ... interfering to insist that she remember. I would have understood them refusing to be killed, but that was not an objection that they raised."  
"I educated her about nihilism instead, and now Dark Lady knows that her every act is futile, whether it be destroying all life or eating cake with Makoto-san. Given this perspective on her despair, I'm sure she will make a more felific choice."  
"That was remarkably practical for you."  
"I am beginning to suspect that me growing as a person and learning to communicate with people who enjoy "happiness" was one of the outcomes that Hypermind anticipated from this secondment."  
"She even asked why I went to such lengths for her, so I told her that it was a meaningless gesture that I choose to make into the void."  
"I hope she understood that you were assigning value to her."

**Earlier**

"Absurd... Sacrificing yourself for another?" But Dark Lady sounded uncertain; she was using the word "absurd" to mean "associated with extremely poor reasoning, the ridiculous, or nonsense"  
"Every act is Absurd." said Sailor Void; jee was using the word "Absurd" to mean "the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any".  
Jee gasped and hiccuped as dark lightning convulsed jeir lungs, but jee spoke with the same whispery inevitability as always. "I have sacrificed myself for another. It is a fatuous performance."  
The words struck Dark Lady like lightning. Devoid of hope or love, Sailor Void should have been like her- angry and lashing out. Her response to her loveless existence was the right one, so everyone with such an empty, hurting life should be like her but Void-chan — and why was jee suddenly so familiar— was not lashing out, jee was not responding, jee was choosing, incurring pain to perform actions that jee didn't even claim to value.  
How could anyone live like that? 

But... wasn't she choosing to be angry? Isn't choosing what people always do? 

It was not a happy memory— Sailor Void was not a major cause of happiness— but she remembered that patient voice asserting that the only important way jee thought differently form anyone else was that they chose to always remember the inconsequence of all their decisions and striving.


	4. There is always need for despair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When I hear the word "Rebirth" I experience a shuddering horror: what if death is not the end? What if we are condemned to repeat the grotesque of human existence forever?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter is fanfic for Un Nouveau Voyage, rather than the anime (I haven't seen the end of super S yet); it exists largely because I was unable to stop myself from responding to Sailor Saturn's line "there is no need for despair".  
> TVG is such a self-insert sometimes. Ugh. 
> 
> This does give rise to the glorious image of TVG listlessly shuffling through the motions of the cheerful musical song and dance routines

"There is no need for despair. Wherever there is destruction there is hope for rebirth; you will be the one to bring it about, Sailor Moon." said Sailor Saturn. She was both vocalising a well-rehearsed rational that put her horrific destructive power into a positive light and trying reassure the other senshi. Sailor Void understood this but was unable or unwilling to refrain from arguing. 

"There is always need for despair," said Sailor Void. Jee fell into place, walking easily by Saturn's side towards the darkness that shrouded Pharaoh Ninety. "We must not think that despair is an external thing, caused by our weakness or the strength of the forces arrayed against us. Despair is eternal and inescapable; an inextricable part of existence."  
With stately movements, Sailor Void displayed a small piece of fairy cake to the impenetrable nothing that hid Pharaoh Ninety and, fulfilling one of the characteristic behaviours of jeir role as sailor-guardian, declared jeir attack:  
"Total Perspective Vortex!" 

Seen from point of view of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, there is no difference between a star-spanning horror from the Tau System and a frightened little girl in a sailor fuku, trying desperately to be brave for the sake of her friends. Both would perceive, somewhere, in that mind-shattering vastness a tiny little marker, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which said "You are here", and be crushed by their insignificance. From the outside- as the person displaying creation (as extrapolated from a sufficiently analysed piece of fairy cake)- the sensation was eerily neutral. Jee had obliterated a mind; there should be more to it than a slight hum and a click. There was not, so Sailor Void fulfilled one of the other actions expected of jeir role.  
"Now Sailor Saturn!"

Jee put jeir hand on her shoulder and stepped across the boundary with her.

From behind the event horizon came the quiet inarguable statement: Death Reborn Revolution, and a profound silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not happy with TVG dying here; TVG should die in a stupid pointless encounter, like that one with the possessed novelty vacuum-cleaner, but jee is not the senshi of rebirth and was inside P90s light cone when Saturn dropped the glaive on him, so jee is dead. I can't imagine jem not stepping into the Tau System either - it was a futile action that helped no one.
> 
> There may be more TVG - it is not like there is a coherent time line, and wherever someone has angst in their heart and makes an fatuous comment in an uncaring universe, TVG is there in spirit.  
> Jee is one with the futility-of-all-striving now.


	5. Sailor Void says:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh gosh it is so perky and hopeful and well intentioned:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwJT6P9dNQY

In today's episode, Beryl tried to destroy all humans because Darien* liked Serena* and not her. You might think that that is a bit over the top, but romantic feelings can be very powerful.   
Sailor Void says: organic life is a brief aberration, a thin smear of self-organised matter on the surface of big ball of rock, alone in the void. Why don't you concentrate on what's really important? Not impressing a boy with extinction, but taking time to contemplate your own insipid existence. It can be difficult to start, but take just five minutes a day, say before you fall asleep, to feel anxious about how every choice you make destroys all the lives you could have led. It may not be as showy as killing everything in actuality, but on a hypothetical level, you get to kill all but one of your infinite potential selves every single day.

Or you could try worrying if you are on the right path, and then realise that there can be no such thing; your path is the accumulation of things done to you by impersonal forces and happenstance and decisions made either carelessly or with insufficient data. Regardless, it leads only to your grave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Argh, the artistic necessity of using dub names for the Sailor Says chapter. Anguish!


	6. Sailor Void and the quest for the Holy Grail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What is this, Monty Python? `Oh yes, we've already got one, you see. It is very nice' "

In a cathedral in the ocean, surrounded by magical napalm and Luna-P's nano-assembled fire- suppression foam, Sailor Void looked appalled.  
"You found it," jee said, giving gave Sailor Pluto an unfriendly look. Jee had joined the quest for the Sangréal with enthusiasm, for some values of "enthusiasm", revelling, for very subdued values of "revelling" in the quest's Sisyphean nature. The point of the Quest was, in jeir tradition, that striving after perfection led to both personal growth, inevitable failure and, when one failed to achieve the high ideals laid out, despair. Jee didn't much care for self-improvement, but inevitable failure and despair were two of jeir favourite things. Gawaine failed. Lancelot, Percival and Bors failed. Galahad, perfect knight, fighting saint who achieved all his battles through miracle, "the best knight of the world" and complete Marty-Stu saw the Grail uncovered and died; at least according to Malory. Achieving the Grail was not a thing, not for humans; questing for it might make you nobler and a greater person*, might give structure to your life and let you fill it with meaning (or in The Vacuous Gesture's case, unmeaning), but it was never _found_.

"I thought we were on a doomed quest for unattainable perfection, seeking to transcend our mortal failings through the harsh penance of the Quest, but you two were looking for a quasi-physical cup containing recursive quantities of Sailor Moon all along?" There was no doubt about it- there was shock and betrayal in Sailor Void's voice. Betrayal at the outer Senshi who had searched for the Grail like it was a tangible object, betrayal at the universe that had provided a Grail that behaved like a tangible object. 

"We did keep telling you that we'd do what must be done to find the Grail," said Sailor Neptune, emphasising the words "find", "the" and "grail".  
"I thought that was a meta-textual statement of the personal failings that made you unworthy and so unable to achieve the Quest," said Sailor Void. "The irony was exquisite," jee added, apparently thinking that this was a genuine complement.  
"In that case, sacrificing ourselves is the transcendence you thought we were questing for," said Sailor Neptune. "And only after that did the wondrous cup appear, so we're okay."  
"But we were always willing to do that, right from the start we swore ourselves to the quest over each other, so that's no personal growth," said Uranus, "it must be more than that."  
"Pluto showed us that we didn't have to sacrifice anyone, not even ourselves. Not even each other," said Neptune, in order of ascending importance.  
"Thank you. A convoluted discourse of the meanings that could be assigned to our actions was exactly what I needed after this shock. I'll leave you two to making gooey eyes now."

 

*Again, according to Malory. It should be noted that Malory was either unable to or refused to distinguish between "noble spirit" and "battle skill"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, what I look for in the grail quest (failure) is probably not what an audience of Japanese school children in the 90s were looking for in the grail quest.


	7. Eternal recurrence means never having to say goodbye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time travel is not the only way to reach the future.

"You go ahead", said Sailor Void, "I'll catch up."

The Vacuous Gesture was not good at missing people. Jee could experience a lot of "alone" before it turned into "lonely". But seeing people off — going out of your way to experience their absence in as visceral a way as possible — still seemed a worthy experiment. From the point of view of Chibi-usa and the Sailors and Mamoru, of course, no time would pass before they saw jem, or someone indistinguishable from jem, again.

Chibi-usa held forth the Key of Time and cried to the heavens, which answered her in a voice of thunder and twisted gravity. Then the inner senshi and family Moon vanished from the time-line. Sailor Void remained. There were a lot of hopeless struggles between now and the thirtieth century, and jee wasn't going to miss a single dragging, banal, terror-soaked instant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I only thought of the final chapter title a day after this was published, so it was briefly "Simply alive out of habit"  
> https://nihilisa-frank.tumblr.com/image/131096983272
> 
> and very nearly "To become a crowd is to keep out death"  
> https://nihilisa-frank.tumblr.com/image/128936560926
> 
> All possible titles were answers to the question: why won't TVG die before reaching the silver millennium?


	8. By my crooked teeth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a good bit, with Doorknobdar in it.

Doorknobdar and The Vacuous Gesture walked down the street in Juuban. It was a warm summer evening, with slanting golden light and long shadows. Doorknobdar was a lock-obsessed ugly-cute elf with dusty purple skin and a half-tonne security door bolted to her left arm. Earlier she had suggested that they go to watch Motoki close up at The Crown Arcade, sounding only slightly creepy about it.  
The Vacuous Gesture was entirely human. Jee had agreed to the the walk, "not because I like watching people close and lock doors, but as an exercise of my radical freedom."  
In the distance, traffic rumbled and swished, emphasising the quiet.  
"I have been attempting to construct meaning through adoption of a role. Would you care to aid me in this? It will involve a banal conversation."  
No one on the street was opening or closing a door. Doorknobdar indicated that she was free for light conversation on non-door related topics.  
"I have observed that many of our contemporaries build their relationships through giggling about potential romantic partners together. Is there any special entity in your existence?"  
"I never meet people who care about important things like door operation and lock mechanisms. Sometimes I just feel like there's no one out there who could understand me."  
The Crown's sliding doors opened themselves; Doorknobdar lost all interest in conversation. Motoki stepped through; he turned to lock up and they closed again; beneath the "wurrrrrrump" sound of the runners sliding there was a slight hiss from the pneumatics; light from the setting sun reflected from the toughened glass and the weather-seals crinkled as they met.  
"Hi Motoki-kun," said Doorknobdar, sounding slightly stunned.  
The Vacuous Gesture glanced at her.  
"We went for a walk on this lovely evening," jee said, "and then realised that you must be shutting up around this time, so we came by to say hi."  
Doorknobdar watched him slide the key into the multipoint six-pin eurocylinder. She perceived the key-pins raising and lowering smoothly over the cuts, springs flexing to keep the drive-pins in contact with them, until the shoulder and tip bumped gently against the tumbler, aligning the pins for rotation. The fit was micron-perfect.  
"So what does locking up mean to you? We'd both love to hear about your experiences of meaning and/or locking."  
Motoki looked at them and saw vague interest aimed at him (from The Vacuous Gesture) and rapt fascination aimed at The Crown's lock (from Doorknobdar). He turned the key. Doorknobdar bit her lip and asked, "Can I help with the roller shutters?"  
"The Crown doesn't have roller shutters," said Motoki.  
"Yes you do, it's that built-in unit with powder-coated two mil steel slats and reinforced side guides," said Doorknobdor, pointing at the roller shutter unit that she had just manifested using her peculiar door-powers.  
"You must have got them to lower your insurance premiums after all the monster attacks," lied The Vacuous Gesture, "You should get someone to paint it up so the arcade doesn't look unfriendly."  
Doorknobdor gave jem a look.  
Doorknobdor reached for the drive-chain, steel links cold and hard in her hand and pulled on it. The roller shutter descended, loud and clattering, a quarter-meter at a time to the ground.  
"Ugh it's stiff. Can you give me a hand here Motoki-kun?" said Doorknobdar. She blushed lilac.  
The security door had a cutesy mural of a Sailor V knock-off painted on it. Motoki sorted though his keys and selected the one for a 10 Disk AVA Cylinder, and used it to secure the shutter to the ground.  
"Well, it was nice seeing you, but I, uh, should be going home..."  
"Goodbye Motoki-kun."  
Once he had gone, The Vacuous Gesture and Doorknobdar walked back towards the temple.  
"Thanks for covering for me. You know - about the manifestation."  
"Minoko always assigns value to playing cupid, so I'd been meaning to give it a try anyway. "  
"I don't think he even knows what a lever tumbler mechanism is, but it was fun to pretend. "  
They walked on for a bit. Doorknobdar thought about sensitive hands and slender picks and cunning mechanisms. The Vacuous Gesture thought about the fundamental nature of language, and how you could never know what a word or a gesture meant to someone else, only the way that they responded to it.  
"So, was that look you gave me 'how dare you doubt the perfection of my door-related choices' or 'oh I had overlooked the psychological impact of my dread portal, thanks for reminding me, I'll re-manifest it as something friendlier' ?"  
Doorknobdar laughed like a drive pin clicking over serrated wheel flys. "It meant 'thanks for covering for me', you goof."  
"You weren't thinking about doors."  
"You weren't thinking about despair."  
They walked on through the sunset.  
Doorknobdar was a fragment of the all-devouring Silence wearing the human concept of "locks" as a sort of encounter suit against the destructive — and thoroughly alien — metaphysical realities of local causality.  
The Vacuous Gesture took considerable joy in living in the destructive metaphysical realities of local causality.  
Neither of them was very good at assigning value to "friends", but perhaps they were friends, all the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I only started looking out for shots of the Crown's sliding doors during my current watching of Crystal season 3, so if they look different in the original series I've forgotten. The Crown doesn't have roller shutters in shots prior to the point equivalent to Doorknobdor 's episode in S, but of course it wouldn't :)


	9. Monster of the week2:Cardian

"Corn-u-nope-ia!" yelled the animated, empty horn-of-plenty, angrily stuffing innocent festival-goers into its maw. Although The Vacuous Gesture was new to Japan, jee was fairly confident that this was a different set of unmeaning acts than normally occurred at a harvest festival. Although it could, of course, be a gameshow. 

Still... the cats had given jem a henshin wand, and if jee was to attempt to create meaning in jeir life by adopting the role of "senshi", then jee would have to do so to the best of jeir ability. The Vacuous Gesture called forth the futility in jeir heart, and felt the indifferent universe fail to give the non-answer that was jeir untransformation. Glitter drifted vaguely across the festival, its motions erratic and uncertain, buffeted by chance gusts of wind and leading to no conclusion. Jee said "I am the beautiful guardian of love and despair, Sailor Void." and the words fell flat into the panicked crowd. Jee made a number of meaningless gestures. Not in jeir normal, metaphorical way, but literal alterations of the position of jeir arms and torso.

"The Horn of Fuck-All is a precious symbol of Nature's paucity and the inevitable if long-delayed Malthusian crisis! How dare you use arbitrary, senseless mass suffering for evil!" 

The Cardian, the other Sailors -except Mars- and En all gave Sailor Void a Look.

"R-strategy population dynamics give rise to suffering as a dynamic outcome of an impersonal system of cause-and-effect," Jee said brightly "each actor is both perpetrator and victim. Each individual is powerless to change the outcome, and so WE bring suffering on US. This suffering is without moral dimension." Jee appeared to think that this was a helpful, complete and positive answer to their unspoken questions. 

Rai had other concerns "I can not forgive someone so culturally insensitive as to bring re-purposed Graeco-Roman harvest symbols to Labor Thanksgiving Day! By Mars I shall chastise you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The horn of Fuck-All has a deep personal meaning for me. I first saw its glory here:  
> http://www.viruscomix.com/page499.html  
> I am very proud of "Corn-u-nope-ia" as a name for it though :)
> 
> I think I've got the harvest festivals right - my understanding is that Rai almost certainly celebrates Niiname-sai "Celebrations of the First Taste," at the shrine but that the big public events are for the more secular Kinrō Kansha no Hi "Labor Thanksgiving Day".


	10. Pronouns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I have paid an insensate machine to perform a futile act in an empty chamber. There can be nothing more valuable than this."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A companion piece with "What are your pronouns?", the next bit of legion of face-punching

1

I am The Vacuous Gesture," says The Vacuous Gesture. "My pronouns are jee, jem, jeirself. What are yours?" The Vacuous Gesture is neutral, jee does this to everyone; a banal social habit performed by someone who embraces its futility.  
...  
"Are you implying that I'm not-cute?" growls Makoto. She shifts stance, asserting her femininity with the threat of kung-fu violence.  
"You are exactly the right sort of cute for you, but I don't know how that matches up with the words I should use. So I asked."  
...  
"Seiren!" says Seiren.  
If everyone rejected pronouns, The Vacuous Gesture mused, it would be the end for this entire class of insipid conversations. Nevertheless, jee would persist.  
...  
"She, her," says Chibiusa. She is a princess from the 30th century; she knows etiquette.  
...  
"Pssst," says Usagi, "Ami, which ones are pronouns again? They're a word-thing, right?"  
...  
"Hello fellow human, I am completely familiar with what you just asked and am giving an appropriate answer, because I am human, and not an evil plant at all, just like my sibling-human here," says Ali, convincingly. "Have you seen how amazing my flute is?"  
....  
"I ... what?" Says Naru.  
"Which words would you like me to use to refer to you? Popular choices include "he" and "she"; people are really bad at guessing which to use, so I ask."

 

2  
When Usagi sees Haruka at the arcade again, she insists on introducing her cool new friend to all her associates.

The Vacuous Gesture has found an empty crane-game and is amusing jemself by putting tokens into it, having the claw lower, close on nothing and then drop the nothing into the chute. Jee goes through the ritual of checking the chute with a pleased lack of expectation. Motoki had tried to usher jem to one of the functional games, but jee had reminded him that it was his role as an arcade manager to sell wonderful dreams, and that this was jeir dream.

Haruka flirts with everyone, even the social black hole that is The Vacuous Gesture, so after Usagi finishes introductions, Uranus puts on a charming smile and asks if The Vacuous Gesture has won anything good.  
"As you can see," says The Vacuous Gesture, "I have paid an insensate machine to perform a futile act in an empty chamber. There can be nothing more valuable than this."  
"I am The Vacuous Gesture," says The Vacuous Gesture. "My pronouns are jee, jem, jeirself. What are yours?" says The Vacuous Gesture, conventionally.  
Haruka's practised smile flickers to something a bit more forced, and the blonde gropes towards a dismissal of the question. "Does it matter?"  
"`Mattering' is a lie that we tell ourselves, because we have forgotten our own insignificence," says The Vacuous Gesture, but jee enjoys the Authenticity of Haruka's rare moment of awkwardness. Jee does not answer the ostensible question; the usefulness of pronouns is not the subject of this fatuious discourse; the opportunities for psycological injury through misapplied pronoun use isn't either. This insipid exchange is to find the right pronouns for Haruka, and Haruka clearly does not want any at all.  
Uranus gets the conversation back on track (i.e. to being about Haruka's attractiveness), and invites The Vacuous Gesture to come on a moterbike ride. It is a shallow declaration of wealth, youth and daring. The Vacuous Gesture accepts for a future date and conversation shifts to other things, notably Usagi's desire for dumplings.  
...  
The question stays with Haruka though; no one has asked it so simply before, like it's a grammatical detail that you have to ask about and then just go with.  
There was nothing more behind The Vacuous Gesture's question; not just the absence of judgement, the absence of the possibility of judgement. It is not that Haruka has doubts, or that other people's opinions matter. Haruka is _excellent_ at gender, certainly better than you at any of them.  
Haruka _does_ like confusing people and The Vacuous Gesture has refused to play that game, but that is a very minor detail.  


3  
It is with the awkwardness of the conversation in mind that The Vacuous Gesture accepts the offer of a motorbike ride.  
Haruka maybe- is- thinking about throbbing power between their thighs, and the physical closeness of the pillion passenger clinging to the rider. The Vacuous Gesture is thinking of yelled conversations torn away by the roar of the engine and the rush of the wind.

"I love this it's like flying."  
"I'm sorry I didn't hear that."  
"PARDON?"  
" 'I'M SORRY I DIDN'T HEAR THAT.' "  
"WHAT?"  
"..."  
"I SAID I LOVE THIS I FEEL SO FREE."  
"WHAT?"  
For jem, the subtext is always: "Did you really consider that insipid comment worth saying once, let alone repeating it?"  
Jee is confident that Jee can resist the temptation to continue to misunderstand even once Haruka eases off on the throttle.

**Author's Note:**

> So TVG's pronouns have actually fallen off the wikipedia page  
> "Third-person pronoun", but when it was listed it went like this:
> 
> Nominative (subject) Jee laughed  
> Oblique (object) I called jem  
> Possessive determiner Jeir eyes gleam  
> Possessive pronoun That is jeirs  
> Reflexive Jee likes jemself


End file.
